International luxury marketing

Purpose: This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies. Design: This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context. Findings: The authors outline pivotal changes in luxury marketing including the growing prominence of emerging nations and technology adoption. A systematic review of luxury marketing literature reveals that most research is still centered around developed nations. The field has a relatively low impact and no dominant authors. The research content does not converge with luxury industry trends. This provides an exciting contribution opportunity for academic researchers. Originality: The briefing saves busy executives, strategists, and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format

Compromise pricing in luxury

Purpose Going beyond odd and even prices, this paper aims to explore the rationale behind the widespread practice of setting prices ending in “50” or “80” in the luxury industry. The authors argue that when they set such prices, managers agree to reduce their profit margin to limit the anticipated guilt luxury consumers associate with luxury shopping while also protecting their brand luxury. The authors label these prices compromise prices and formally define compromise pricing as the practice of choosing a price’s ending so that the price falls below (but not just below) a round number to boost sales without damaging brand luxury. Design/methodology/approach Following the observation of the overrepresentation of prices ending in “50” and “80” in the luxury clothing category, an experiment explores the impact of compromise prices on anticipated guilt and brand luxury in the luxury watch category. Then, to identify when luxury pricing managers typically favor compromise prices, multinomial regressions investigate prices collected on two online luxury fashion retailers for the luxury clothing and handbag categories. Findings Compromise prices reduce the anticipated guilt luxury consumers associate with luxury shopping compared with even prices while enhancing brand luxury compared with odd prices and interestingly, with even prices also. This finding gives rationale to luxury managers’ preference for compromise prices in the ninth hundred (i.e. €X950, €X980), especially for higher-priced products, i.e. when the potential for price underestimation and/or the risk of damaging brand luxury are more important. Originality/value This research contributes to the field of luxury pricing by providing evidence to an original price-ending practice, coined compromise pricing, which consists in agreeing to a slight reduction in prices and unit margin to protect brand luxury.

Luxury Business

The high growth experienced by luxury companies during the last three decades has attracted the attention of a broad range of scholars from various academic disciplines, from history to management and critical studies. This chapter discusses their respective contributions for a better understanding of contemporary luxury business. Additionally, it offers new perspectives on the major global issues faced by this industry in the post-COVID pandemic era, namely, the globalisation of markets and dependency on China; income inequality, the democratisation of luxury, and authenticity; questions concerning production; sustainability; and the challenges to European dominance of the luxury industry.

Intellectual Property Rights and Country-of-Origins Labels in the Luxury Industry

Intellectual property rights and country-of-origin labels are two different and often complementary mechanisms of protection. Entrepreneurs in the luxury business use them to inform the consumer and the custom authorities, to protect their innovations and know-how, and also to enhance the narratives of their brands. These protective mechanisms are historically contingent and subject to reinforcement or weakening due to the entrepreneurs’ lobbying, due to governmental protectionism, and more generally due to international competition. Intellectual property rights are not complete systems of protection and present numerous asymmetries between various countries and industries. This chapter also addresses both the effectiveness and the weaknesses of intellectual property rights and of nation branding in informing the consumer, and in deterring the production and purchase of substitute products.

Luxury Supply Chain Management

This chapter focuses on supply chain management in the luxury sector. The concepts of supply chain and supply chain management are introduced first, with an overview of the most prominent scientific research works as well as industrial frameworks and methodologies; a discussion of luxury supply chain management in scientific literature follows. The central section of the chapter is dedicated to dissecting the anatomy of the typical luxury supply chain: first of all, it argues that there is simply no such a thing as ‘the typical luxury supply chain’, as the luxury industry is characterised by opposing trends; the section continues by illustrating how these opposing trends are moving companies into clusters which are internally homogeneous but significantly differing from one another. The chapter then illustrates some market trends that are increasing the complexity of supply chain management in luxury, followed by a brief discussion on how brands are reacting.

The Impact of COVID-19 on Consumer Behavior in the Luxury Industry

The following paper is aimed at understanding how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed consumers’ attitude towards consumption of luxury and discretionary goods, what are the consequences of these disruptions, and what strategies brand can employ in order to survive in a post-pandemic future. This situation served as a catalyst to accelerate some of the True Luxury Consumer trends that were beginning to gain popularity in the past few years, such as the prioritization of experiences over physical items, resulting in a tendency towards minimalism; the increased interest in sustainability, ethics, and the Corporate Social Responsibility commitments of brands; the enhanced use of online distribution channels, and the consequential need for a seamless omnichannel strategy which could effortlessly and efficiently replicate the offline, in-store experience on digital platforms; and, finally, the emergence of new ways to experience luxury goods which prioritize accessibility over ownership, such as the second-hand market for luxury as well as luxury rental services, like Rent The Runway. The pandemic has highlighted a series of issues in society, healthcare, and businesses; the consequences of these issues have been tragic, but also eye-opening for brands as well as consumers. In the clients’ perspective, big companies hold the responsibility to not only provide a product or a service, but also to be helpful assets to their communities. Brands should live up to these expectations, not just to survive in the “new normal”, but also to genuinely help build a better future once the dust settles.

THE SURVIVAL OF FASHION LUXURY BRAND WHEN THE DESIGNER CHANGING: HOW TO BALANCE DESIGN AND MARKET IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN BRAND VALUE

Fashion designer is one of dominate role in a fashion luxury brand. There are many cases that luxury fashion brand via recruiting a creative designer to revive their commercial empire. For example, Tom Ford capitalizes on ten years to make nearly bankrupt Gucci resurge, even become a bellwether that value 4.3 billion market cap in the luxury industry[1]. But, that is not mean every designer could be lucky to cooperate with a brand that match his or her design style, such as the transitory cooperation of Kalvin Klein and Raf Simons. Thus, except the cooperation situation of designer and company, the other critical factor to determinate one designer whether match a brand is the balance between design and marketing. This report examines the plight of fashion luxury brand when designer changing. And explore how to remedy the loosing of brand core competitiveness and discuss a sires of reasons why new design concept useless for sales improvement, also, how to utilize marketing strategy such as visual communication to maintain brand equity. In this paper, the author conducted a series of comprehensive methodologies such as content analysis, historical research and case study to probe the role of designer for luxury brands and describes that marketing strategy might contribute to protect brand value in the period of brand upgrading. The research finding that, whilst designer changing, the visual marketing could be an effective method to help luxury fashion brand tide over difficulties, whole visual presenting of brand could maintain the impression in customer mind.

The use of blockchain in the luxury industry: supply chains and the traceability of goods

PurposeMost businesses strive to control the efficiency of their supply chains; however, luxury firms face additional challenges from counterfeit, gray market and copycat products. Blockchain technology can address these issues and enhance firms' supply chain management, guaranteeing the traceability and origin of luxury products. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the utility and contexts influencing the implementation of blockchain technology to optimize supply chain management and prevent fraud in the luxury industry.Design/methodology/approachThe research uses a qualitative approach based on the grounded theory method. Data are collected by semi-structured interviews with 12 stakeholders working on blockchain applications in the luxury business sector.FindingsHighlighting the problems faced by luxury brands' supply chains, this study presents blockchain technology as a solution for disintermediation, traceability and transparency in the luxury goods sector. The constraints faced by luxury brands incorporating this technology into their ecosystem include the knowledge gap, the multiplicity of third parties involved in the production process and bias toward short-term returns on investment.Originality/valueBlockchains promote greater transparency and efficiency within supply chains, which builds consumer trust and improves brand revenue. Considering luxury brands' reluctance to adopt blockchains, this study suggests that luxury firms adopt a staggered implementation of private blockchain networks starting with a small number of third-party suppliers.

Holography and the Luxury Industry

The luxury goods industry and holography have a lengthy history together. In this article, we review the applications of holography to the industry and the relevant technical requirements, in particular when the hologram itself is the luxury item, when the hologram is used to promote luxury items, and when the hologram is used for authentication of luxury items. We then explore some possible scenarios for the evolution of this relationship.